Happy Holidays

Happy Christmas 

and 

Happy New Year.

I am taking a week off and hope you are doing the same!



Have a look at this week's video 'Christmas vlog' on my You Tube channel?   
Horse Life and Love.  Please check it out and SUBSCRIBE.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates on Chesney, Basil, Tommy and Daisy.

Until next time!   

Jo

Taking care of your hands!

I don't know about you but in the winter my hands really take a beating.  In and out of cold water washing buckets, covered in mud from picking feet out and freezing cold from doing both of those things!  

I still have not found a decent pair of gloves to wear whilst doing all these jobs.  I'm not keen on spending a lot of money because they really won't last long with the hard use they will get.  They need to keep my hands warm but I also want to be able to do rug buckles and headcollars with them on.  

I have always just worn the bobbly gloves - I am sure you know the ones - but recently they are so cheap and badly made that they have holes at the end of the fingers in a week (or less) :(
 
Last week with all the snow and very cold weather I was wearing 2 pairs of gloves, my summer riding gloves under the bobbly ones and this is fine until I need to do something with water.  In the last couple of years I have started putting some 'surgical gloves' on over the top of my bobbly gloves to pick out feet and that works pretty well.  I am not very good at doing this for washing buckets though and of course Basil's hay is damp from being steamed.

Sometimes I wear kitchen gloves over my bobbly gloves too but these are a bit too thick for doing some jobs like rug buckles.

I mostly end up just trying to treat my hands afterwards.  I think I am lucky because it is rare for the skin on my fingers to split, although it has happened. 

The best cream I have found is the Body Shop's Hemp hand cream - that is really good and thick and I slather it on at night time.

Yesterday I decided to buy some of these to try  ....

.... which I think will be good for buckets and wet haynets but they are not that warm so I bought a bigger pair so I could fit other gloves underneath if I need them!

Do you have any hints of tips?

Have you seen last week's video 'One Day in December'  on my You Tube channel?   
Horse Life and Love.  Please check it out and SUBSCRIBE.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates on Chesney, Basil, Tommy and Daisy. 

Until next time!

Jo

All About ... Horses and the Winter

At this time of year there are a lot of things to think about with horses and fewer light hours to actually do things - so here is a reminder of some of the key things.

1.       Some horses will feel the cold more than others - have a look at my blog to find out more about how horses are adapted to cope with different weather conditions.

2.       Stabling: check out my blog I posted a couple of weeks ago about restricted grazing.  There are a lot of things to think about when your horse is stabled for long periods of time!

3.       Mud Fever: can be a big problem at this time of year so do everything you can to prevent it occurring in the first place, check out my video for tips.

4.       RAO is more often a problem in the winter when horses are stabled more and fed more hay.  The environment can be dusty and causes problems for some horses' respiratory systems.

5.       What you feed to your horse during the winter often needs to be different to their summer feed, I wrote a blog a couple of years ago about the important points to think about with this.

6.       Riding can be a challenge in the winter too with the dark and gloomy days and the risk of icy roads so check you my blog for a few things to think about.

7.       Chesney has had problems with soft soles on his feet and has had abscesses over the last 2 winters so I will be looking out for this and trying to prevent his feet becoming soft in the first place this year.  I have a concoction from the vet to paint on weekly but there are other products available with eucalyptus which work well.

8.       Rainscald can be a problem for some horses at this time of year, treating it can be difficult at this time of year too, because generally horses need washing - and it is cold!!  Access to heat lamps would definitely be an advantage!

  

Have you seen this week's video 'One Day in December' on my You Tube channel?   
Horse Life and Love..  Please check it out and SUBSCRIBE.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates on Chesney, Basil, Tommy and Daisy. 

Until next time!

Jo

A Truly Great Horse - Sefton

Sefton was a truly great horse,  surviving a car nail bomb that killed 4 soldiers and 7 other horses from the Household Cavalry on 20th July 1982 in Hyde Park.

He was born in Ireland in 1963, his sire a Thoroughbred and his dam Irish Draught.  He was bought by the Household Cavalry in 1967. An impressive 16hh black gelding with a beautiful white blaze and 4 socks.  Sefton could be quite headstrong and was known to bite, nap and fidget!  

The IRA bomb left him with 38 penetrating wounds to his body, a damaged eye and a severed main artery in his neck.  Thanks to the speedy veterinary attention he survived  but had to have further surgery to remove the metal.

Sefton was named Horse of the Year in 1982 and really captured the public's imagination.  Donations for him funded an Equine Hospital at the Royal Veterinary College campus .  He returned to his regimental duties after 3 months until he was retired in 1984 at The Queen's Birthday Parade in June.  He moved to The Horses Trust where he eventually passed away in 1993. 

Sefton was 1 of 15 horses from his regiment on duty that day and all were injured, although Sefton the worst of his surviving stable mates.  The other seriously injured horses were all shot to prevent their suffering .  Echo, a grey police horse was hit by shrapnel and became too fearful of traffic to return to his duties.  Yeti another black horse suffered nerve damage and was also unable to return to his duties.  

There is now a bronze statue of Sefton at the Royal Veterinary College. 

 

Did you see last week's video 'Basil's Exercises'  on my You Tube channel?   
Horse Life and Love. Please check it out and SUBSCRIBE.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates on Chesney, Basil, Tommy and Daisy.

Until next time!

Jo

All About ... Moulds

Like bacteria, moulds can be good, providing antibiotics, or bad, producing disease and spoiling food.  The size of moulds means that individually they cannot be seen by the human eye until there are many formed close together.  Most moulds need a temperature of over 4°C to grow (this is why we refrigerate food), however, many can remain dormant until  there are suitable conditions.  Their ability to survive extreme temperatures varies from mould to mould!

The cells of mould are arranged in threads which then form into a tangled mess - a mycelium!  Each cell has a nucleus with chromosomes.  Moulds produce large number of spores (for reproduction) and some types can then be dispersed by the wind. Moulds can be fungal and non-fungal.  

Non-fungal moulds can be:

Slime moulds: these are further split into plasmoidal or cellular.  Plasmoidal slime moulds are thin masses of protoplasm which creeps along moist leaves and rotting logs.  These moulds engulf their food particles.  Cellular slime moulds can sometimes group together to look like plasmoidal but are usually separate cells.

Water moulds: this group includes rust and mildew.  Some of the worst plant diseases are caused by water moulds including potato blight and soft rot.

Bacterial moulds: eg: Streptomyces griseus which secretes the antibiotic streptomycin

Fungal moulds include Penicillium which produces penicillin, one of the most widely used antiobiotics.  An effective antibiotic, it unfortunately only works on a small number of bacteria and resistance is increasing :(

Chesney is allergic to Penicillin, he had a very scary reaction to it when he was young and so we don't dare give it to him anymore.

Have you seen Wednesday's video 'Basil's Exercises'  on my You Tube channel?   
Horse Life and Love.  Please check it out and SUBSCRIBE.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates on Chesney, Basil, Tommy and Daisy.

Until next time!

Jo

November 2017 Review

November started OK but then went downhill :( So I did not achieve my aims at all.  We have a plan 

now though, I don't think December will be very exciting but hope January will be better.

My Aims for November were: 

1.      Calmness and Rhythm in trot canter

2.      More balance and slower in canter

3.      Correct canter leads

4.      Calmer trots after cantering

5.      Turn on forehand

6.      Shoulder in on left rein

7.      Leg yield circles (spirals)

8.      Small jump (maybe a bit bigger)

This is what November looked like:

3rd - horses all had their teeth checked and rasped today ... all good.

4th - hack out today, fast walking but no jogging!  Basil did whinny a lot but was pretty good really.

8th - lunged, Basil was very good today but had lost a shoe (seemed perfectly sound) and had cut his mouth so I couldn't put a bit in anyway - going to be a few days before I will be able to ride L

Bit foot sore now.

18th - Basil has his shoe back on now but decided to lunge first, he was silly to start with but then very good.

19th - rode in the arena today, not too bad until tried to canter, then he went all tight and tried to buck!

24th - 26th - I organised for someone to come out and look at Basil's back this weekend.  I called the vet to see if they had some names of people they had worked with first.

The physiotherapist watched Basil walk and trot up and down and had a good look and feel of him before trying and then leaving me with some exercises to do with him to try to improve his strength in his back.  I will keep you posted!

My Aims for December are to do our exercises and for Basil to get better.

Have you seen yesterday's video 'Basil's Exercises'  on my new You Tube channel?
Horse Life and Love.  Please check it out and SUBSCRIBE.

You can also follow me on Facebook and Instagram for updates on Chesney, Basil, Tommy and Daisy.

Until next time!

Jo